Permissive Use Agreement

The permissive use agreement is modeled on the basic expectations of a CC-BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). It explicitly requires attribution, although unlike a CC license, it does not rely on copyright status in any way. This agreement version further differs from CC-BY in that it has more detailed provisions about “attribution” (i.e., citing and crediting use and re-use) of media. The specific form of the attribution expectations reflect the nature of MorphoSource media as representations of physical objects, often belonging to museums or other kinds of organizations with physical collections. The full Permissive MorphoSource Use Agreement can be read here.

Where do the attribution provisions in the MorphoSource re-use agreements come from? The specific attribution requirements were developed from surveys of and discussions with a variety of museum collection organizations including the American Museum of Natural History Department of Mammalogy, The Duke Lemur Center Division of Fossil Primates, and a group of 16 institutions with associated museums that collaborated on an NSF funded Thematic Collection Network grant called “oVert” from 2017-2022.

Compatibility with other aspects of Ownership and Permissions: This agreement version cannot be used in combination with any restrictions on commercial use that may have been selected for Copyright and Licensing fields.